You're quoting the NPR article, which misleadingly conflates the people we're talking about (who work for news agencies to verify their stories before publication) with social-media moderators, not the State Department directive, which (if we can believe the Reuters reporting at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-orders...) is fairly clear that it's only talking about the second.
Please link it if you have found it, because as far as I understand this story, the directive was sent out as an internal memo and therefore neither you or me can simply read it. Plus the Reuters story you've linked also has an almost-identical paragraph:
> The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on December 2, orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants - and family members who would be traveling with them - to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.
Because Reuters and NPR consist of journalists, and if US consular officials were denying visas to people due to having worked in journalism, they would not be implying that with subtle innuendoes; it would be front-page news on NPR, Reuters, and probably the New York Times and the Washington Post as well, accompanied with dire warnings about how the freedom of the press was under attack. They reliably do this every time the Trump regime retaliates against journalists or journalistic organizations.
